Romania's energy regulator to decide on solar cuts in early 2013 - Bloomberg

The regulator has already recommended the reduction in the number of green certificates offered for solar power production to five from six per megawatt, Bloomberg said quoting ANRE's director general, Nicolae Havrilet.

He also added that ANRE has to analyse the investment costs reported in 2012 and then decide a possible cut in green certificates, measures already taken by France, Spain, UK and Italy. According to the current legislation, changes can be made in January 2014 at the earliest.

The investment costs for the production of one megawatt (MW) have halved to about 1.5 million euro ($1.9 million) in the last two years, Bloomberg quoted Zoltan Nagy-Bege, director at ANRE.

He sees Romania's solar capacity at 1,500 MW in 2016, adding that the country may have up to 100 MW of power produced in solar plants at end-2012.

The news agency also explained that Romania will need investments of 5 billion euro in order to reduce it carbon imprint by 2020, hence grants two green certificates for each megawatt of wind power and six for solar power. The major source of renewable energy for the country is the wind energy in the regions close to the Black Sea, where companies such as CEZ AS have already made investments.

The Romanian energy regulator published last week on its website a consultation document on the methodology for the determination of prices for electric energy from renewable sources and the energy trading scheme for power plants with a maximum capacity of 1 MW or of 2 MW for high-efficiency cogeneration plants. The consultation ends on December 3.

($ = 0.7857 euro)